Two of her posts really inspired me. Firstly, her December 30 post, Advice for Painting Growth in 2017, talks about how study and practice are the keys to artistic growth.
As I read the article I realized that these would be easy goals for me to accomplish this year.
I had been wallowing around, and getting somewhat disillusioned because I was unable to create the kind of skillful pastel painting that I see from other artists. My pastel art was definitely lacking something and, of course, a lot of it is technique.
So I signed up for a year subscription to Art Tutor.com which has online courses and classes in everything from drawing to watercolors.
I have enjoyed, on an off, the series "Painting Landscapes in Pastel" with English artist Michael Howley. I say "on and off" because I originally signed up with Art Tutor for a month over a year ago and let then that lapse. However, this was the first pastel I did, following along with one of Michael's lessons.
My goal now, having found my way back to Art Tutor, is to make a habit of watching at least one lesson per week, and practicing what I have learned.
Today I watched a lesson on cloudscapes. Here is my first, rather crappy effort. I'll do this same painting a couple more times this week and try to perfect the technique and the feel of painting clouds.
That ties in with the second post from Karen Margulis' blog, and the title of this blog post, "#PaintTime2017"
In addition to the weekly painting, Karen actually challenges herself to paint each day.
Since I'm starting a new full time job tomorrow it's highly unlikely that I will be able to paint every day, but I think I can come to a compromise and give myself the attainable goals of
- watching a lesson each week
- practicing the lesson at least two or three times during the week
- posting the best of my efforts and tagging it #PaintTime2017.
It will be interesting to see my progress during the year.
